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Recovering a Lost or Stolen Gadget
gurps_npc writes "The explosion of portable electronic devices, can really weigh you down. Carrying a pager, phone, iPod, camera, and game is quite a lot. Worse, it gives you many more such things to misplace or get stolen.
This CNN story discusses some of the retrieval services that help you keep what belongs to you. I particularly like the first one, about a new Singapore-based software that when you download it to your phone, messages everyone in your phone's database whenever a new chip with a new phone number is installed in the phone. This makes it very hard for someone to steal your phone as all your friends get their new phone number."
I was wondering when we'd get today's first iPhone-related story. Bravo, slashdot.
what is stopping anyone from deleting all the friends in the phone's list before they switch the chip? Or as I thought, doesn't the chip hold all that information on it (at least for SIM cards)
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
when I'm not near it. RFID?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Software solutions/Dial home won't do it. Any respectable thief will instantly power off the device, put it in a metal briefcase, then when he is in a secure location will format/restore to default the stolen device in a matter of minutes and then sell it to the black market.
I use StuffBak myself (they're mentioned in TFA). Haven't had to use it yet, but their website is a snap to use and their labels are very affordable.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I seem to have lost my gadget for finding lost or stolen gadgets. I wonder where I left it? All I need to do is find my gadget for finding lost or stolen gadgets and then...
Ack.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
When you use blackberry enterprise server, an admin can remotely lock the device, and display a message on how to return it. You can also wipe the device remotely.
Further, since blackberries sync their contents to the server, you aren't going to lose information. Just get a new blackberry, and sync to the server.
I buy replacement and loss insurance on all my expensive items I also encrypt all important data. (cellphone requires a pin password to turn it on or use it)
If someone steals my PDA, they wont get the data as it's safe, and I get a brand new PDA. works great.
I just wish the security in PDA's were decent so that after 3 attempts it locks the PDA and will not unlock until it is resynched in the cradle of the mated PC. Palm and Windows pocket devices can be reset and sold. Phones are 100% useless on the black market (you do report and have your esn blacklisted with your cellphone company right?) PDA's should have the same kind of protection available.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You give the thieves far too much credit. Your average thief is even dumber than your average person.
Deleted
The only gadget that I carry is my cell phone. To simplify things even further, I use my cell phone only as a phone. What's wrong with being boring, unsexy and non-techo?
You're clearly just compensating for having a massive penis
There are various Bluetooth presence software add-ons that will lock your laptop, cell phone, PDA, etc. when it's out of range.
iAlertU is definitely the coolest way to keep your MacBook (Pro) from being stolen. You can turn it on with your remote control like you do with your car keys. It even features the familiar car locking and unlocking sound. When someone grabs your notebook the fall sensor normally used to shut down your hard disk when a fall is detected activates, the screen starts flashing and an alarm siren goes off. It even snaps a photo of the thief with the built-in iSight webcam and emails it to a predefined address.
Be sure to check out the YouTube video of the software in action. It really made me laugh just because of the sounds. Can't wait to try that out in my university library :-)
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
I believe most theives steal goods to sell them on, rather than to use them themselves.
In that case, so long as they can get ca$h for your goodies, they won't care who has the number after they've flogged it off. It's not as if they will offer a guarantee, or after-sales service.
The only real solutions are to prevent items being stolen, or to make it blindingly obvious to a potential buyer that the item is non-functional
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I think FlexiSPY is a whole lot cooler, though.
My buddy got robbed yesterday, we didn't believe him at first because he still had his wallet, but then he showed us there was nothing in the wallet & then showed us his new iPhone.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
What kind of idiotic thief doesn't do a hard reset on the phone they stole, thereby erasing any counter-measure type software?
In what year are we living again?
Actually, you haven't lost your "gadget." My law firm PH&P (Patent, Hoard, and Profit), has successfully stopped you from infringing on our patent for "Use of misc. gadgetry." We'll be happy to restore your access to the gadget, once the licensing matter is brought up to date.
Remember our slogan, "Patents are about sharing, not FUD!"
I think this is a cool feature. It won't stop all thieves, but it makes stealing gadgets less worthwhile. Thieves don't want to spend an hour cleaning up the gadget, they want to push it though their channel of stolen goods resellers asap.
Also, if the feature only works for one thief out of ten, it's still cool.
no, I don't have a sig
Trackitback and Stuffback stickers are available pretty cheaply. There are still good people out there that will return your items - if they can. These labels just give them an easy way to do it.
Then again, it's good to always assume your mobile device will be lost and treat the data on it as publicly accessible - always.
*Encrypt the files with sensitive info.
*Enable password protection - using a real password, not a nancy-boy pin number.
*Keep cellphone service numbers on a card in your wallet so you can cancel service quickly if your phone is lost.
*Maintain a backup of your cellphone contacts and configuration so you can reload a new phone quickly.
*If you're rolling with a Treo with connections to an exchange environment- make sure you have the necessary updates so you can issue a remote nuke to wipe the device the next time it checks in.
I have an even easier solution - I don't carry a ton of expensive gadgetry about my person on a daily basis.
When I do carry expensive gadgetry about (usually only when geocaching) I do as I was taught as a kid - the gadget is either in use, or it's where it belongs. (I.E. in the appropriate belt pouch with the closure fastened.) I never lay stuff down for 'just a moment'.
I was thinking about adding a script that would do all these network operations... But I have a power-on password on my laptop, as well as one for my OS account.
Take into account the fact that a dumb person can't override the power-on password, it means that they'll probably pass the computer to someone who has the skills to remove/reset it, and the brains to understand that the safest thing to do is to wipe the system. I have never seen a person who connects a computer to the internet, this being the first thing they do with it once they get it.
I conclude that either these phone-home scripts are useless, or we should redefine the best practices of security and remove power-on and user account passwords from the list, so that the phone-home script actually gets a chance to connect somewhere.
The saddest poem
Technology: The case of the novelist's car-phone
0 -technology-the-case-of-the-novelists-carphone-.ht ml
* 02 March 1991
* BARRY FOX
* Magazine issue 1758
The British police could catch many more car thieves than they do now by using the cellular phone networks to trace cellphones installed in stolen cars. But the police rarely take advantage of this and most officers seem unaware that the facility even exists - even though more than a million people in Britain now have cellular phones.
In addition, the operators of the cellphone networks are giving subscribers the wrong advice when their car is stolen. They advise cutting off the phone, which then prevents its use for tracing the car.
This problem was highlighted recently when the novelist Margaret Drabble had her car stolen from outside her home in Hampstead, North London. Her husband, historian Michael Holroyd, tried phoning the mobile phone in the car. A man answered, and said to Holroyd: 'I'm the thief who has stolen your car. Piss off!'
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12917584.90
My wife... will never recover from her stolen USB powered vibrator.
God may revenge her pain!
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
When my iPod was stolen (with my name engraved on the back), the sheriff recovered it from the booty of a couple of teenagers who had gone on a spree. They were in a different jurisdiction, so my police report was not on file with them. But a deputy called Apple, who called me with the case number. I was reunited with my iPod the next day.... And we lived happily ever after (once I paid the $65 for a new battery). The End.
I can see it now... ...rush hour in the central bus/train terminal overflowing with cellphone users, when the 12 year old hacks the remote detonation console of the phone company. splat *.* /oops
- Use a SIM test card, that will at most allow the phone to dial an emergency service, but still allowing full access to the phone and the removal of the software.
- Stuff the phone into a Faraday cage (an antistatic bag is enough for this) and then remove the security software.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
I, for one, am much more worried about important, but not-sensitive stuff (things like the keys to your house: you need to have them safe, but if somebody finds them, it's no big deal. Nobody would try every key in every house in the city to beat the odds of finding the right one). I'd like some kind of radio-based detector (RFID, maybe) that helps me keep track of those annoying, easy-to-lose items.
:)
Alternatively, we could just wait until Google is so all-knowing that we could just type "my keys" into it, and receive a satellite picture of them.
With the dependency that people have on gadgets and gizmos, it is a wonder how humanity even managed to exist without it.
.....oh wait a minute.....
There is a gadget for everything a person could possibly need, except one to take a shit for them.
I don't have a cell phone, don't have in-dash navigation, GPS, digital camera, digital video camera, webcam, a PDA, a PSP/Nintendo DS, an IPod/MP3 player, portable DVD player, push-free vaccuum, hands-free telephone, etc., yet I can still function just as well as anybody else, if not better, seeing as how all of my friends that have these things complain like the dickens because hey are incapable of any kind of physical labor.
A million years ago, humans were amazed by fire. Today, vaccuum cleaners that push themselves and watching TV on a cellphone that is a PDA/video/still camera are passe and nothing new.
The only really digital things that I have are my computer and my clock...
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I have that capability...for my Treo.
. It performs a wide array of tasks including one special one - lock the phone and destroy the phone's data.
I run a commercial add-on program for the Treo called Butler (http://www.hobbyistsoftware.com/butler-more.php)
How it works - I can send one of four different SMS messages to the phone containing a preselected (by me) password and an instruction, directing the phone to perform one of the following actions:
- Lock & Turn off
- Wipe Ram , lock and turn off
- Wipe SD Card , lock and turn off
- Wipe Ram & SD Card, lock and turn off
Given that I synch to my work and home PCs, I will not lose any data in the process. I know, because I have tested it...after my last palm was stolen. Grrrr.
You can always call the carrier to disable the phone, but my larger concern is my data.
Someone I know had their PDA filched from their back pack when they were on a crowded bus. I suggested they go look at the local pawn shops over the next few days. Sure enough, it turned up and it still had his business card in it. The proprietor of course had the name, address and copy of ID for the guy who had hocked it.
XIx.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
And I'm sure they use it in other countries, but this I discovered on my last trip there (almost 1+years now). This phone had 2 parts, one part that was kept with you, either on a key chain or, as I saw with one girl, sewn into your pocketbook/book bag, and the other was in the phone itself. When these 2 objects were more than 100ft away from each other you couldn't even turn the phone on. And yeah I know someone already suggested RFID, but I felt the need to share my story as well lol.
This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!